Oakridge Infotech Inc (formerly Colour Clouds Inc) was established in the year 2005, delivering technology solutions for global clients. We have grown into a mature IT solutions provider delivering innovative technology solutions and services across multiple domains. We provides services and solutions spanning across Microsoft’s product line to deliver improvements across the entire enterprise. We engage with customers to help unify their web assets; including Content management, collaboration platforms, analytics, cloud solutions, enterprise mobility, CRM, ERP, social marketing, rich media applications, search, digital marketing integration, and many more. We make sure the customer expectations with user experiences, increased business agility, enriched quality and on time deliverables with tools and processes.

What is API Management?

API Management helps organizations publish APIs to external, partner and internal developers to unlock the potential of their data and services. Businesses everywhere are looking to extend their operations as a digital platform, creating new channels, finding new customers and driving deeper engagement with existing ones. API Management provides the core competencies to ensure a successful API program through developer engagement, business insights, analytics, security and protection.

Watch the following video for an overview of Azure API Management and learn how to use API Management to add many features to your API, including access control, rate limiting, monitoring, event logging, and response caching, with minimal work on your part.

To use API Management, administrators create APIs. Each API consists of one or more operations, and each API can be added to one or more products. To use an API, developers subscribe to a product that contains that API, and then they can call the API’s operation, subject to any usage policies that may be in effect.

This topic provides an overview of API Management key concepts.

Note:

For more information, see the Cloud-based API Management: Harnessing the Power of APIsPDF whitepaper. This introductory whitepaper on API Management by CITO Research covers:

Common API requirements and challenges

Decoupling APIs and presenting facades

Getting developers up and running quickly

Securing access

Analytics and metrics

Using cloud vs on-premise solutions

Azure API Management

Because insights drawn from raw data become less useful over time, being able to calculate RFM features in near real-time to aid in decision-making is important [1]. Thus, a general solution that enables one to send event logs and automatically featurize them in near real-time so the RFM features can be employed in a variety of problems is ideal.

APIs and operations

APIs are the foundation of an API Management service instance. Each API represents a set of operations available to developers. Each API contains a reference to the back-end service that implements the API, and its operations map to the operations implemented by the back-end service. Operations in API Management are highly configurable, with control over URL mapping, query and path parameters, request and response content, and operation response caching. Rate limit, quotas, and IP restriction policies can also be implemented at the API or individual operation level.

Products

Products are how APIs are surfaced to developers. Products in API Management have one or more APIs, and are configured with a title, description, and terms of use. Products can be Open or Protected. Protected products must be subscribed to before they can be used, while open products can be used without a subscription. When a product is ready for use by developers it can be published. Once it is published, it can be viewed (and in the case of protected products subscribed to) by developers. Subscription approval is configured at the product level and can either require administrator approval, or be auto-approved.

Groups are used to manage the visibility of products to developers. Products grant visibility to groups, and developers can view and subscribe to the products that are visible to the groups in which they belong.

Groups

Groups are used to manage the visibility of products to developers. API Management has the following immutable system groups.

Administrators– Azure subscription administrators are members of this group. Administrators manage API Management service instances, creating the APIs, operations, and products that are used by developers.

Developers– Authenticated developer portal users fall into this group. Developers are the customers that build applications using your APIs. Developers are granted access to the developer portal and build applications that call the operations of an API.

Guests– Unauthenticated developer portal users, such as prospective customers visiting the developer portal of an API Management instance fall into this group. They can be granted certain read-only access, such as the ability to view APIs but not call them.

In addition to these system groups, administrators can create custom groups or leverage external groups in associated Azure Active Directory tenants. Custom and external groups can be used alongside system groups in giving developers visibility and access to API products. For example, you could create one custom group for developers affiliated with a specific partner organization and allow them access to the APIs from a product containing relevant APIs only. A user can be a member of more than one group.

Developers

Developers represent the user accounts in an API Management service instance. Developers can be created or invited to join by administrators, or they can sign up from the Developer portal. Each developer is a member of one or more groups, and can be subscribe to the products that grant visibility to those groups.

When developers subscribe to a product they are granted the primary and secondary key for the product. This key is used when making calls into the product’s APIs.

Policies

Policies are a powerful capability of API Management that allow the publisher to change the behavior of the API through configuration. Policies are a collection of statements that are executed sequentially on the request or response of an API. Popular statements include format conversion from XML to JSON and call rate limiting to restrict the amount of incoming calls from a developer, and many other policies are available.

Developer portal

The developer portal is where developers can learn about your APIs, view and call operations, and subscribe to products. Prospective customers can visit the developer portal, view APIs and operations, and sign up. The URL for your developer portal is located on the dashboard in the Azure Classic Portal for your API Management service instance.

You can customize the look and feel of your developer portal by adding custom content, customizing styles, and adding your branding.

By Steve Danielson

About Company

Oakridge Infotech Inc (formerly Colour Clouds Inc) was established in the year 2005, delivering technology solutions for global clients. We have grown into a mature IT solutions provider delivering innovative technology solutions and services across multiple domains. We provides services and solutions spanning across Microsoft’s product line to deliver improvements across the entire enterprise.